Wanting to do a canine accompanied cycle ride for charity.

Murphy and I cycle together a lot and we both love it. As the title says, I keep having this crazy urge to do a canine accompanied cycle ride for charity, but I have no idea where to start.

Ultimately, I'd love to do the Coast 2 Coast which is 140 miles, from the North West coast, across the Pennines, to the North East coast. Unfortunately, a lot of the route is on roads, so unsuitable for running dogs on. I also feel this kind of distance is a little ambitious for a first attempt. I've found some 25 - 30 mile off road cycle tracks in the area, that I feel may be a good starting point. We currently cycle 5 miles, twice a week and he always seems to have energy to spare, so I've no doubt with a proper training programme and diet we could eventually work up to that sort of milage and beyond. If we go ahead with this I'd like to arrange it for next Autumn.

We're going to visit the vet soon, just to have his general health checked, before embarking on any training, but again I'm not sure how to impliment the training programme. I guess I'm looking for advice on training and diet from anyone who runs sled dogs.

The other thing is, would you sponsor someone to cycle just 30 miles with their dog?

Nope! But I'd sponsor the dog to run 30 miles!

Ooooo - would you sponsor Tai then!! He runs easily this far when we go out along the canals on our bikes every weekend !!

Hi,

I don't see why with the advice of your vet, a proepr diet and a training programme where you can warm up and down properly, cycling/running a little further each time that you can't do it and be very successful at it.

You say next Autumn - I take it you mean next year? That should be plenty of time. Although it may not take that long to get to that level, it means you can work slowly and build up more endurance.

I'd definitely sponsor you so long as you definitely had the dog running beside you and also depending on which charity you were doing it for.

Laura xx

I would certainly think your beagle could do far more than your current 5 miles. If you think what a pack of beagles would have done on the average day's hunt, 5 miles would be just a warm-up! Provided you get a clean bill of health from the vet, and you stop for regular shady rests, and water breaks,(with Tai, who is a Mal cross, in hot weather we stop about every mile or so, depending on the terrain and the amount of shade), I would say Murphy could probably manage 20 miles right now, provided you do not bike flat out. With Tai and Ben, we bike along the canals at a speed of probably around 8-10 miles an hour, so pretty slow. We stop as I say very regularly for a rest, drink and a dip in the canal for the boys, which of course keeps them marvellously cool in this hot weather. You know your little guy better than anyone, but if he is fit, not overweight and generally healthy, I would say you could start off right now at 10 miles. We did 30+ with Tai shortly after we got him, as a totally unfit rescue. It was hot weather, but we were permanently under dense foliage so no hot sun, and he revelled in his freedom of being allowed off the lead. We rested him the next day, and the day after that we took him swimming in the sea, and then the day after that did a shorter bike ride with him and he was absolutely fine and still raring to go. The beauty about cycling with your dog is that it comes the closest to being a natural hunt that you as a human can achieve. For once, you can keep up with your dog and even overtake him, so you become Pack Leader going out on a hunt, and even the most disobedient of dogs slips into "hunt mode" and magically become obedient! They will lope along just behind or just ahead, sometimes cantering, but usually doing that lovely lope that dogs can maintain for miles ... even fairly small dogs like a beagle. Just don't go too fast, let Murphy set the pace.

I most certainly would love to sponsor you and Murphy!!